There is nothing stupid about it, 50 calibre sniper rifles are designed to shoot at among other things parked aircraft, which are one of their intended targets. Its obviously silly to fret about such things shooting down supersonic aircraft in flight, but such weapons are a threat to parked aircraft and are deliberately designed to be so. Airliners are not armoured, they have large and vulnerable fuel tanks and they represent a target several hundred times larger then the mansized targets that you may be thinking about with your comments concerning range. You can regard the likelihood of terrorists using such a weapon in such a role as low all you like and I’d be inclined to agree with you, but that has nothing to do with their capacity, as by design they do have the range and hitting power to be dangerous to aircraft.
See below for instance discussing a weapon of this calibre:
Why does it matter what the people who wrote the US Constitution over 225 years ago wanted? We aren’t living in the 18th century anymore.
On a topic more germane to the OP, I don’t think the people drafting this law realise that lots of civilian hunting or military surplus bolt-action rifles have effective ranges around 2000yds. A .308, .30-06, .303, 7.92x57, or 7.62x54R calibre rifle is quite capable of putting a hole in a suitably large target at that sort of range, for example. It’s a silly proposed law, but one that doesn’t really affect many people at all (I offer no commentary on that whole angle of the debate, though).
As the British found out during the Battle of Britain, it’s surprisingly hard to shoot down aircraft using machine-guns… unless you hit the engines, and even then it generally takes more than 1 bullet to bring down the aircraft. The whole thing sounds politically motivated, IMHO.
No, certainly not. As others have pointed out, the SC in this case did not make their ruling based on any distinction between militia and non-militia ownership of weapons. Jack Miller himself was not a member of the National Guard.
ExTank mentioned the unorganized militia; I think it is useful here to point out that as per 10 USC 311, every male citizen between the ages of 17 and 45 is a member of the unorganized militia.
May I ask why? Aside from prohibiting large magazines and a few specific weapon brands and models) the ban did little besides prohibit specific combinations of certain cosmetic features of firearms that were not fundamentally different from typical hunting rifles. During the ban, numerous rifle models were released that were functionally equivalent to banned weapons; they merely left off the collapsing stocks, threaded barrels, and bayonet lugs. Even if you supported the idea of banning “scary-looking guns”, the 1994 ban was completely useless.
Personally I’m very glad the ban was allowed to expire, as now I can buy high-capacity magazines and get a new rifle with a bayonet on it.
(Devil’s Advocate: But you know, something had to be done about all those drive-by bayonettings…)
You could shoot down an airliner with a hunting rifle if you were miraculously lucky. Your odds are slightly better with a bolt-action .50-cal. Even if by some miracle somebody does shoot down an airliner with a .50 caliber rifle, I would still be against banning them. Legislating based on freak accidents is a terrible idea.
On the other hand, the weapons that are actually capable of shooting down airplanes are already illegal.
Huh? The way I see it, the amendment is more often tortuously parsed in an attempt to drag out some restriction by the prefatory clause (“A well regulated militia…”) on the operative (“the right of the People…”).
You need only look at the writings of the founding fathers to see that they understood that a well-armed populace was an essential deterrent against tyranny. For all that the foundation they laid was robust, they knew that it could fail, and that in the event that it did, it was necessary for the people to have a last-resort means to secure their freedom. Why did they even include the phrase “free state” in the Second Amendment? A militia is necessary for the security of any state. For the preservation of a free one, it is necessary that the populace be armed.
My problem with this specific argument and the 2nd amendment is the idea that the second amendment mandates that I have the right to bear any arms that I like, and that restricting my access to .50 caliber weapons (or Howitzers or nukes or nerve gas, ala The Duck of Rat and Airman Doors) is akin to removing that right altogether along with free speech, peaceable assembly, and so on.
Some gun advocates have taken the slippery slope to the level of a mantra. “Ohm. Ohm. You-can-have-my-shoulder-fired-stinger-missle-when-you-pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-shoulder. Ohm.”
If you want to argue that you have the right to do anything and everything when it comes to weapons, I’ll tell you that I think you are fucking insane.
OK, then where are the proactive steps to produce such a happy state? Were arms distributed freely to the population, or locked up in armories? What steps did the baby Republic take to ensure that its own dissolution might be more easily obtained? Which forms of government interference are “tyranny”, and valid cause for rebellion? Was the “Whiskey Rebellion” a valid and sanctioned civil action, or an unwarranted rebellion? How about government interference in the God given right of a man to own another man?
Given that several of the Founding Fuckups were of the Hamiltonian-elitist stripe, do you include these men as favoring an armed public, a public they regarded as largely rabble? Or were they more likely to favor a more authoritarian approach? Remembering, if you will, that such as these were likely to favor keeping the freedom to vote secure to the propertied class? Such men as these favored arming a class of citizens they largely disdained? Seems unlikely.
Show me where. I dare ya. Show me where people, mainstream gun rights activists, are seriously arguing for the right to keep and bear nuclear tipped ICBMs, and their own Ohio-class sub fro which to launch them.
No right is absolute. You can’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, yet this is not seen as an infringement on Free Speech. The 2nd Ad. specifically talks about arms, not ordnance. Case law, and the current U.S. regulatory scheme is set up to make the distinction. Hell, Parker, one of the most gun-friendly decision to come down from a higher court in a while specifically acknowledged that there’s nothing unconstitutional about reasonable restrictions on the ownership of firearms.
The only real debate we should be having is what constitutes "reasonable. I can tell you one thing: what may seem reasonable to dense, overcrowded New York City or Chicago ro L.A. probably won’t seem reasonable to less-densely populated areas like Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana.
You brought up the 9/11 and “gotta do sumpin’” argument. That is a fallacious broad brush on an argument which served your needs here, but which you would never allow to stand if applied to one of your pet peeves. As well it shouldn’t.
See above, and I think others in the thread also addressing this.
This has been explained.
Stop right there. I said that other weapons could cause serious damage to an airplane, not that they were potent anti-vehicle weapons. Something need not be “designed” to do something to accomplish a task. Screwdrivers are used as hammers all the time. Also, I have not seen evidence that the 0.50 is designed as an anti-aircraft weapon, and I doubt that it was. I could be wrong, however.
I did not deny that. Sure they can penetrate more metal. You might have at least noticed that I did NOT say they couldn’t bring down a plane, nor that they weren’t more damaging than other rifles. I contended that they weren’t damaging enough to be considered, IMHO, a significant threat to specific installations. That they were not this awesome super-weapon where any Jed D. Billy-Joe-Bob-Baxter could take one and start blowing up oil refineries or spreading chemical death across all of Philadelphia, and that people plan on vandalism and terror acts to some extent when building plants.
The very fact that people do spend large amounts of money on them and do have competitive shooting with them, without committing crimes, means they are not pointless to everyone. Not my cup of tea, but then a lot of people’s crazy sports are not mine to regulate unless they become a problem. In fact, in 2004 the Seattle Times (first Google hit) reports that 22 have died from football since 2000 - how many have died from these civilian-version 0.50 weapons, either as accidents or in a crime? IIRC, the number is “0”. If one were to argue which sport is more dangerous and should be banned, I’d have to say we start with football.
But then that would be a fallacious argument too, in a way, since football is hard to use in a criminal or terroristic manner. However, I like shooting a hell of a lot more than I like watching braying HGH-shooting jocks getting paid tens of millions of dollars and extorting hundreds of millions of dollars from cities for new stadiums. Sadly, I don’t have the moral authority to ban football just because I don’t like it, nor does anyone else have the moral authority to ban shooting just because they’re terrified of guns and gun owners.
And I contend you have a preconceived position that will not alter in the slightest no matter what is posted on this message board. I fail to see the point of further discussion. Plus I’m about to go on another work trip and don’t have time to answer much more. Call that “leaving the debate”, but there’s little I can do.
Sort of like the free speech zones that Bush set up.
Where in this thread or others have those that support the right to defend themselves suggested that we want missles or what has been pointed out as ordinance again and again. The histronics about the ‘pro’ gun crowd wanting missles and howitzers does not help your position. And it does not exist.
Who is arguing that? I don’t see it. I do see that many responsible gun owners exist. And that they may question those that don’t seem to know much about guns. But those that would like to ban a specific gun, or all guns don’t know a damn thing about them.
Keep your broad brush away from me and all the responsible gun owners that I know.
I, and every responsible gun owner would agree with you. Those regular Joes and about half of the US that do own guns agree that we don’t have the right to do anything and everything with guns.
Luckily, the assault weapon ban sunseted. A new class/desciption of a gun was created (very losely), just so it could be banned.
It’s the anti-gun folks that need to be honest for a change. But it is hard for them because again and again they show that they know very little about firearms. If they want to ban everything but hunting rifles and bird guns, say so.
The problem is that every hunting rifle is a sniper rifle, and every shotgun is an ‘assault weapon’.
Then there is a line? I was just starting to get the sense from AD and others that there is no line - AD for example tried to make a case for nukes and nerve gas.
I suppose we are just debating then where that line is. I’m damn glad, however, to hear some sanity from the gun folks.
Both “sides” suffer from extreme allies. Personally, I have no real problem with rifles and sporting guns. And I would personally love to punch a hole in armor plate with a BFG, just once. Testosterone poisoning.
But I loathe and despise hand guns, having only the one purpose, plugging people. A sensible position, in my estimation, but one that does not attract allies of either extreme.
No, I didn’t. I made a blatantly stupid response to the usual “nerve gas and nukes” bullshit because I was tired of seeing people bring it up. Why is that not equally absurd?
I’m more than willing to have a perfectly rational argument with you. Simply refrain from calling me “insane” either directly or by implication (see your comment above) and keep the bullshit rhetoric about wanting weapons of mass destruction out of it.
This is a good, reasonable point that deserves a real response. The .50 BMG round was invented either to shoot down aircraft or to use against early tanks, depending on who you ask. But what a lot of people who talk about what destructive weapons these rifles are either don’t know or gloss over is that just possessing a powerful military weapon doesn’t mean you could ever use it effectively.
As someone else said earlier, true anti-aircraft guns today are larger-caliber, automatic weapons. The .50 BMG is a World War I-era round, designed for use against planes that weren’t even made of metal and tanks with hardly enough armor to stop an ordinary rifle round. Obviously, it still has some utility or the military wouldn’t still be using it, but that has to be put I perspective. Just because something is a lot more powerful than a deer rifle doesn’t mean it is in any way capable of shooting down a 747 with one shot, or even 100 shots. A 747, and most modern jets, have multiple engines, internal fire suppression systems, and bodies that consist mostly of empty space. A few bullets from a plain old rifle, assuming one could hit the plane at all, would most likely have no effect at all.
And just hitting the target is a bigger deal than anyone realizes. The people who oppose civilian ownership of these guns like to cite how they are “effective up to 2,000 yards!” and other scary-sound pap. But “being effective” at that ranges requires that one actually can aim at and hit something that far away. There are probably only a few dozen or hundred men in the world capable of doing that, and half of them are in the U.S. Army. The odds that any of the others sympathize with the Taliban, could infiltrate the United States, get their hands on one of these guns, find a spot close enough to a refinery and/or an airport, and hit something vital are incredible. And in truth, there are much easier methods one could try that would result in far more deaths.
Other posters have said this move to ban .50 caliber weapons seems to be politically movitivated. I agree. But it is also motivated by the disconnect between appearances, showbiz, and reality that has become a part of American life. Yeah, there are people out there who could take a .50 rifle and kill someone 1.5 miles away. And if the terrorists had the ability or means to train to that level, they wouldn’t need suicide bombers. We need to focus on the threats as they are, not how we or others imagine them to be. Obviously 9/11 was a pretty unlikely event, but there was a lot of bungling and mistakes made that allowed that to happen, not least of which was a simple policy of turning over control of planes to men armed with nothing more than box cutters. Are we therefore going to outlaw box cutters?
Full or empty?
Full? Zero. JP4 doesn’t behave that way.
Completely empty and filled with fumes? Meh. Remember, there’s multiple tanks on each wing. It could happen, and you’d damage a plane’s wing. Bout it. The .50 doesn’t help change the equation much from a .30.
Should we use it as a broad-brush “gotta do sumpin” thing?
Hell, no. And I’ve got tons of posts on this board about what we ought to do to protect ourselves, and why. I think I’m pretty clear that I’d like to see some consistent standards, dealing with major hazards. I still think it’s absurd that, 5.7 years after 9/11, we aren’t doing shit to protect chemical plants or transport, which I’ve started threads about in the past.
Seems NJ is worried about this gun being used against its chemical plants. Is it possible that this gun might be able to penetrate storage tanks of hazardous chemicals that a bullet from a more prosaic rifle might just ping off the side of? If so, then that’s reason to be concerned about this gun and similar guns.
I am all for being proactive, and not waiting until after the next disaster to guard against it. OTOH, I think we can do what we need to do without gutting habeas and within FISA. I think what I’m posting in this thread is consistent with the hundreds of posts I’ve made here on these topics.
Now, let me review the assertions I’ve made in this thread, just so we can get clear on what you’re saying, and what position I’m defending:
What drew me into this thread (and is still my main point) is your “if this is so easy to do, why hasn’t anyone ever done it before?” claim @13. My point, expressed @41, is that people periodically do things for the first time whose potential was there all along. People hijack planes and fly them into buildings, for instance.
I also noted @41, and reiterated @50 and @89, that this gun had multiple potential uses that made it more problematic than your everyday rifle. I’m not just talking about airplanes.
Various persons made the claim that it would be impossible to hit a plane with a gun - this gun in particular, or any not fully automatic gun, whichever, depending on poster. I rebutted that @50 and @55.
I talked about proactivity in our post-9/11 world @51 and @52. Like I said, consistent with what I’ve posted for years here.
Also @52, I rebutted that odd notion that if you can do target practice with something, then there’s no reason to keep it out of civilian hands.
I made an offhand remark about Miller@90. That’s neither here nor there as regards our discussion.
I have no disagreement with that. I’ve just been pointing out that it’s reasonable to think someone skilled with this gun could hit an airplane with it, not that other guns couldn’t.
Nor have I claimed it was.
Seriously, Una, I think you’re confusing what I’ve said with what you’ve imagined that I’ve said.
Most chemical plants predate the Age of Terrorism, so I doubt it. And given that after 9/11, the chemical industry enlisted Cheney’s help to ensure that they wouldn’t be expected to do anything new, I don’t see that they’re serious about it now.
And no, I don’t think this is some super-weapon. But a rifle designed to penetrate metal would probably stand a better chance of doing so than one that was designed to shoot deer or people or even charging rhinos. And many hazardous substances, be they inflammatory, poisonous to breathe, or whatever, are stored in above-ground metal tanks.
Playing football only kills those who choose to play football. When that’s true of guns, feel free to get back to me.
You point out that you’re starting to pursue a fallacious line of reasoning (good), then you dive right back into it (WTF?).
Neither do I - half the time, you’re not debating me, but rather an imaginary gun-control advocate in your head.
Thanks for the answer, Soup. I think you went the wrong direction in the trade-off argument between first and second ammendment rights, though. It seems much easier to note that, while we are free to say what we want, we are not free to use words as weapons to destroy a person or a person’s property. Similarly, we are free to own guns, but not to use guns to shoot people or blow up the stuff they own. We outlaw certain speech being used in specific ways. We don’t say, “You can never say X.” We outlaw using guns in certain ways, but not the ownership of the gun itself. We don’t assume that, because speech can be used in a destructive manner, it must be outlawed to prevent anyone using it in a destructive manner. I’m fine with treating guns the same way.
Of course, the destructiveness of weapons ramps up in a way that is not applicable to the destructiveness of words, which leads us into the nukes and nerve gas argument. We can accept that, at the extreme ends of the argument, the defence of private ownership breaks down, without giving ground on the sort of weapons that people actually own and use. Some weapons are so destructive that they can’t be allowed in civilian hands. Is this rifle one of them? I don’t see how: we have testimony from people who work in the power industry that this calibur of gun is not sufficient to do more than nuisance damage to a chemical plant or oil refinery. We have testimony from people in the military that the gun is unsuited for shooting down airliners in flight. We have (or ought to have) testimony from out own common sense that one .50 calibur bullet is not going to make a 747 blown up like Luke just fired a proton torpedo down it’s exhaust port. Someone up thread mentioned the danger of using the gun against stationary aircraft. This is a danger? Yeah, it’d be a bitch for Southwest Airlines to have to patch all the holes in their planes, and a bunch of flights would be delayed, but I’m not seeing the danger of massive death and dismemberment to the civilian population that would warrant a ban. That’s not terrorism, that’s just really aggressive vandalism.
I’m not a gun owner. I’ve never so much as held a real gun, and I’m perfectly content with that state of affairs. But this ban is transparent, fear-mongering bullshit, and I don’t need a lobbyist from the NRA with a briefcase full of cash to tell me that. It’s disappointing to see so many leftists arguing for this ban for no other reason than it’s about guns. If you want to make a blanket “No one should have guns, ever,” argue that position on its own merits. Because the argument to ban this specific gun, for the reasons given in this thread and by the framers of the bill in question, is so utterly lacking in merit that it would be comical, if so many people were treating it so seriously.
I’m staying out of this one. Una claims that you could do serious damage to an airplane with an ordinary rifle. You’re saying even this heavy-duty gun couldn’t. Like I said, I don’t know shit about planes, other than (for the reasons I’ve detailed) it seems that there’s a realistic chance of hitting one in the air, albeit while slowing down for landing.
Thing is, we’re talking about tanks that make the broad side of a barn look small. And yeah, it probably is easier to cut your way through the chain-link fence and set an explosive charge off right next to the storage tank of chlorine or whatever, than to use this gun to shoot it full of holes from 100 yards away. (How much training would that take?) But why give the bad guys extra ways to accomplish bad shit, when there’s really no downside to it?
No, but we did ban them from planes.
Admittedly, that’s probably overkill - the key thing was to change the policy, and harden cockpit doors. But still, not being able to take a box cutter on an airplane is a negligible infringement on my freedoms, and one I’m willing to put up with to be safer.
Now if I didn’t have to take my shoes and belt off, stow my keys and pocket change in my carry-on, take my laptop out of my carry-on, etc., every time I flew…
